Lap'da suggests that if they want to return to the Sheriff's,
that they just hang out here until evening, get a good rest, and then they'll
have just a short walk tomorrow morning.
They take that suggestion. Most of them decide to
use the day to practice and train. Shark wants to practice his long
blade skill with someone -- Kalida, being an ex-Marine, has the requisite
cutlass skill and is happy to work with him. Lap'da works with Robert
to help his speaking. Shark also collects some plant samples that could
be interesting to analyze back on the ship; he is interested to note that
his ship-powered analyzer is indeed working this far away from the Nightshade.
Helia flies around, looking at the branches up by the
canopy, and playing with the wildlife. The creatures are very cautious
at first, but after a while some of them will come within several meters
to feed on things she puts down for them. She comes down, hovering
by Shark, and says, "You know, cousin Edward couldn't fly either, but we
got her past that. Don't you want to learn how to fly, Shark?"
Shark mutters something about not wearing his zack, but Helia demonstrates
that has nothing to do with it.
Having exercised well, they all sleep well that night.
It is indeed a mere eight kilometers to Cormor Home.
They easily pick out the pulsating lights of the guest quarters. Lap'da
sits down on the grass and watches them go in. Their plan is to talk
to the Sheriff as soon as they can, and try to get answers to the remaining
loose ends. But first, clean up from a few days in the woods...
Shark calls on the guest phone, and invites the Sheriff
to join them for dinner. While they wait, they discuss what they're
going to ask him.
The Sheriff arrives for dinner. Light conversation
occupies them for a while, talking about their walk into the forest and so
on.
Shark asks, "Have you met Lap'da's family?"
"That's hard to say," replies the Sheriff.
All agree that is very true. Shark continues, "We
are very interested in getting in contact with Miss Jane Southcombe.
You said she was a visitor. Do you know who she works for?"
"Not exactly, no."
"Even a vague idea, a rumor, an innuendo, a guess?"
"Some small rich group. I'm not sure where they're
from. They have an interest in this place, and some of the trade and
so on. They provided me with help setting up my zuchai array, and equipment
that runs off that."
"What do you think they get out of the arrangement?"
"I'm not sure. They get some trade goods. They're
involved in the mushroom trade."
"Do they get a particular type of mushroom?"
"Yes. The stuff we grow -- I think you've probably
seen it out there. It gets shipped out, most of the trade going through
Denotam."
"As a foodstuff?"
"Not really, not in that sort of quantity. I'm not
sure exactly what it's used for, but it seems to be fairly valuable to them.
They've provided me with a lot of help. They get to come and stay here
if they want, or they can use the facilities here. Sometimes information,
if there's anything they need. It's well worth cooperating with them.
Yes, they're generous, and have certainly treated me well."
"Good. May I ask what information they're interested
in?"
"Hm. I've never quite sure. Some things they
ask for, it doesn't seem to match up or make much sense."
"I was a... puzzle solver for a long time. You've
piqued my interest, and I'd love to see if I could fit the pieces of the
puzzle together."
"Well, I tend not to remember what it was they asked for."
"Since we're on a galactic walkabout, and our current
curiosity is in reaching Miss Jane, could we take the message? As a
sort of letter of introduction rather than a request?"
"I doubt it. I send a message out, and it gets transmitted
or sent out somehow, and somebody turns up if it's appropriate. I don't
know where the message goes. There are certain channels I use."
"And you're willing to share those channels?"
"No. I am pretty sure she's probably not in the
Imperium. So
she's probably somewhere in the other direction, out more towards the Zhodani Consulate."
The Sheriff pauses, then continues slowly and deliberately, "Be sure you
want actually want to meet her. Do you think that would be to your
advantage?"
"As a person who values knowledge above almost everything
else, yes, I do."
"You say almost everything else. What do
you value more than knowledge? Be careful you're not sacrificing it
for your knowledge."
"You would never trade your life for knowledge alone, although
you might risk it. So is there anyone around who might know her better?
Not here? Well, do you know anyone anywhere that would know her better?"
"Yes. She's not the only one who visits here."
"Do you know how we can get in contact with any of them?"
"Yes, I would send a general message."
Kalida asks, "How long does it usually take them to respond
to that?"
"It depends on how important it is to them. They
are busy and have many demands, I gather."
Shark continues, "If we can be of assistance to you, you
can leave a message..." He gives the Sheriff a few message drops that
will work. He then thanks the Sheriff, and they drop back into light
conversation.
The Sheriff says, "Of course the rain didn't affect you
in the forest, I suppose?"
"No," replies Shark. "It continued to rain?"
"Yes. This is pretty much how the rain comes here.
It's a steady stream when it comes, it's not like we really get many storms
here."
"And the ones you do get, you seem to handle quite well
with your equipment."
"Yes," says Mich, "Your lightning suppression system."
"Lightning?" the Sheriff asks, "I can't remember ever
seeing any lightning here. Hm."
"How's your lightning suppression system working?"
"I've never seen it be used. We've run a test every
now and then, but..."
Shark asks, "How long has the array been in place?"
"Oh, about twenty years."
"And Miss Jane and her associates helped you put it in."
"Of course."
"Did they suggest it?"
"It was something they could help with that nobody else
could."
"So it was your idea, I take it."
"I was looking for something to do that sort of job."
"But you've never seen lightning."
"Exactly. But it's... quite an effective suppression
system."
"It works quite well," says Mich, "Because there's no
lightning."
Shark says, "A hundred percent effective, in all cases."
The Sheriff makes a non-committal noise.
Mich ponders that he's only seen some of the crystals from
the array, not the array itself. He's also seen plans for the lightning
suppression system. It must be impressive -- there are a lot of crystals,
and they are all of the finest quality.
The Sheriff continues, "You haven't actually seen the
crystal array, have you?"
Shark asks eagerly, "Could we?"
"I'm not sure. Like wanting to seek out Miss Southcombe,
you need to be careful what you ask for. Yes, I think one of you could
see the array, briefly. We could do that right away, if you like.
Oh, and I'd appreciate it if you don't mention what you see to anyone --
except your group in a secure setting. This is a secure setting, of
course, as no doubt Mr. Teeth will have determined to his satisfaction."
It's immediately apparent that Mich is the one for the
job. The Sheriff leads him down to the forest, then off in a ground
car.
They arrive at one of the large silos in the industrial
area, the same one that Mich visited to work on the crystals before.
This time they go down in an elevator some undetermined distance. There
is no sense of motion at all in the elevator car, and no indication of how
far they've travelled.
From there, they continue through several guard stations.
It is clear that it's only because the Sheriff himself is escorting him that
Mich can pass through. All the guards are armed, and the impression
is that there are probably a lot of other security precautions too.
Eventually they come to a viewing room, apparently overlooking
the zuchai crystal installation.
"If we walk out here," says the Sheriff, "We'll be able
to see the array."
The Sheriff warns Mich that it won't look like anything he's seen before. He gestures for Mich to go ahead onto the platform, while obviously not looking down on the array himself. Mich steps up, and looks down on the crystal array.
When Mich wakes up, he's back in the forest. What
he saw was indeed not anything he'd seen before. Yes, it was a zuchai
crystal array. However it was really weird, because it was clearly
an array in more than three dimensions, a hypercube of crystals. Mich
has no idea how you would even create an extra-dimensional space that would
allow construction of such a thing. It twisted his mind just to look
at it.
The Sheriff makes sure Mich is OK, then says he has to
leave him for other business. He re-iterates that (as he said about
Miss Southcombe) they should be careful what they ask for, in case they get
it.
The driver takes Mich back to the guest quarters.
Up in the guest lounge, Shark has been explaining to
Kalida that yes, sending a message to Miss Jane will probably put not just
Mich back in danger, but all of them. On the other hand, he's already
asked Robert to keep a watch for transmissions.
Mich returns. He's looking rather pale and unsteady.
Shark says, "I take it you were impressed?"
"Yes. It's hard to get your thinking straight around
what they did with the zuchai crystals." He explains that the layout
is impossible to do with their level of technology. "There's no way
to connect it that way. In fact, they have more crystals in the three-dimensional
space than is possible. The crystals seem to be in at least four dimensions."
"That would almost explain..." starts Shark.
"...how she knew about matter phase inverters," finishes
Mich.
"And it also may explain in some ways the distances we
move in the forest. Couldn't we be 'jumping', but not spending
the six days in jump in this timestream?"
"Hm. Could parts of the zuchai crystal array be
in jumpspace? It's hard to say -- just viewing it caused me to pass
out." Also, he says, there were a lot of crystals in that array
-- it's hard to tell, but there had to be thousands. One lightning
strike is not enough to power a jump drive, and there's a lot more crystals
here than in a jump drive... Of course, zuchai crystals are just short
term storage -- too long, and the crystals start to disintegrate. These
were very high quality crystals, which does lengthen the time, but it's
still short term storage.
Shark recaps the issue of getting the Sheriff to send
a message to Miss Jane. Having Robert track the message would make
a difference, if that's possible. Robert points out that last time
he couldn't trace the message, just detect that there was one -- and for
all he knows, perhaps the Sheriff just posts a message on a bulletin board.
Shark then says that the crew has come across two pieces
of technology that are beyond Imperium -- not counting the Nightshade.
There's a zuchai crystal array that is currently technically impossible, and
a previous ship exploded in a technically impossible way -- the antimatter
bomb that blew up the Anastasia. His point is that being involved
in both of them links them. The Anastasia had Mich's first pass
at his technology.
Mich says that Professor Farol had a single large antimatter
power unit, and Mich modified it to use a number of smaller units.
That made it safer and easier to control.
Shark says they're essentially dealing with a clandestine
security organization and technological sabotage. If they get too close
to making a technology leap, this foreign body is eliminating those involved,
or at least discouraging them, or misdirecting them, or whatever.
Mich says there would have been a much easier way to dispose
of the Anastasia than to take a chunk out of Pimane.
Shark counters that the Imperial government knew what
devices were on that ship -- that's why they were recovering it -- and now
they have the feeling that it's an unstable technology.
Shark returns to the subject of the communication from
the Sheriff -- he's satisfied that if it's sent with a conventional means
they can track it, otherwise they can't.
They discuss how long it should be before the date they
set for a meeting here with Jane Southcombe. After going to and fro
for a while, they settle on nine months.
Mich stands up to go to his guest suite. Before he
leaves, he turns and tells Shark that on his way to the array, they passed
several checkpoints of armed guards.
Robert says that he wasn't trackable once he descended
far enough -- but with a good guess from Mich on the time spent in the elevator,
and an estimate of the speed of the car based on movements of the commdot
while it was trackable, he should be able to come up with an order of magnitude
for the depth of the installation. He works on it for a while, and
announces that while it's hard to say exactly, it was at least a kilometer
underground -- quite possibly much more. He notes that the elevator
must have been very fast, with inertial dampers.
As Shark points out, it's not surprising that such technology
was here -- after all, the array itself was well in excess of tech 17.
He speculates aloud that the Nightshade is probably around tech 21.
Laughing, he suggests that perhaps the ship is powered remotely from some
large planet somewhere -- perhaps what the box does is to send an instantaneous
message saying "jump there!"
The matter of Jane is settled. Kalida calls the
Sheriff. She requests that he send out the message they discussed.
They would like to speak to Miss Southcombe, and will be back here in nine
months.
The Sheriff is glad to offer Cormor Home as neutral meeting
ground.
Shark says that this time they'll bring their chef with
them. By then he'll probably have found some additional new delicacies.
"Be sure not to fly over the forest, of course," the Sheriff
reminds him. "Anything flying over the forest is suppressed."
Kalida laughs, "Suppressed."
Shark assures the Sheriff they won't fly over the forest.
"See you in nine months, then," says Sheriff Hedaker.
Shark adds to his list of questions the precise meaning
of "suppressed."
There is one last matter remaining. Shark asks
the Sheriff if they can have a sample of the mushrooms that they're growing
in the forest. The Sheriff refuses. Shark contemplates getting
a sample, perhaps with his robodog, but doesn't think it's worthwhile alienating
their host.
He does, however, walk out to the mushroom rows.
He looks for any broken parts, or anything lying on the ground that's dropped
during harvesting or packing, but finds nothing. He has to settle for
a reading with his bioscanner/sniffer.
Nothing remains to be done here. They'll spend the night in luxury here, then take the train back tomorrow morning.
Shark and Kalida drop in on Mich and asks him what the
Sheriff might have meant by "suppressed."
Mich says that they have a long history of banning flights
over the forest, and they do know that Cormor Home is protected by missile
batteries.
"But he didn't say stop, or shot at, or anything like
that," observes Shark. "He said suppressed. That's not a euphemism that
would usually be used."
"And I think that flaming wreckage crashing into the treetops
would do more damage than flying over. I wonder if the reason for not
wanting flyovers is more because of what might be seen rather than potential
damage."